


with your eyes upturned

by hlae



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 11:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hlae/pseuds/hlae
Summary: Andromache has never wanted to be married—but perhaps she'd be willing to reconsider.





	with your eyes upturned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/gifts).



> A few liberties were taken with the timeline, and this turned out to be more of a character study, but I hope you like it nonetheless!

Andromache remembers: her mother, before the wasting disease. Soft hands and even softer eyes, smiling down at her while singing a lullaby. She’s the only girl in her family, and that’s probably why her mother doted on her, but even so. She’s never really known what a proper lady should be.

Her father’s always telling her she reminds him of her mother–usually when she’s ignoring his pleas to stop roughhousing with her brothers, to stay inside and demurely practice her weaving or pluck at her lyre. But she’s never liked being trapped indoors, barred by the thick white pillars of her father’s house. No–she’d rather be off galloping through the gently curving hills on Phaethon, her favourite of her father’s horses, a majestic black steed. She loved the feel of the wind in her hair, the sun beating down on her face as she raced past sparking blue water.

“You know that one day you’ll have to stop this,” said Podes to her once. He had still been small at this time, scrawny and no match for his younger sister, spry and tall for her age. He’d been angry that she’d wrestled him into submission, never mind that her legs would bruise with how hard he had tackled her.

“What? Why?” she had replied, still flush with victory, her hair matted all around her face and her chiton covered in mud. Her mother’s handmaidens would scold her, later, and her mother would sigh, but it was enough, now, to have bested her brother.

“You’re a princess,” he’d said, matter-of-factly, regaining confidence now that he had her wrong-footed. “Everyone knows that princesses have to be married off to a prince someday. And then you’ll have to act like a nice lady and you won’t be able to wrestle with us anymore.”

“That’s not true!”

“Is so. Father told me so.”

“It’s not! I’m going to fight and go to war and bring victory to our land!” She hadn’t been raised on tales of glory, exactly, but her father’s drunken guests weren’t always particularly observant to peeking ears.

“Ha! A girl, in battle? Girls don’t fight, everyone knows that!”

Podes had grinned at her triumphantly at that, like she was a stupid horsefly who didn’t know any better, and Andromache had been so angry that she’d burst into tears and stomped on his foot. Hard.

Their father had been very angry, later, when he’d found them brawling on the dirt like commoners, but her mother’s arms had been warm and inviting.

“I don’t want to marry anyone,” she had cried, her tears and dirt getting all over her mother’s lovely robe as she buried her face in her mother’s warm embrace. “I want to fight!”

“Oh, Andromache,” said her mother. “Listen: you are the princess of Thebes. You will fight–it is in your name. But you don’t have to fight with a sword, nor with any weapon at all. You can fight with your brain, with your heart. There is more than one way to win a battle.”

Andromache sniffed and privately thought that for once, her mother had no idea what she was talking about.

But now: she is staring at their Trojan guests. Her father had laid out a marvelous banquet in anticipation of these men, and further in the hopes that one will make an offer for her hand in marriage, she knows. One is handsome and playful, flirting with the servants and dancing skillfully with the women. But she doesn't care about this one. Her eyes are drawn, instead, to the other one. He's not nearly as handsome, but he's well-built, and moves with a warrior’s grace. His hands were callused where they had brushed over hers, almost as if by accident, when she had poured him a cup of wine.  

But somehow she doesn’t think this is the case.

She had seen him when he rode up to her home, the setting sun glancing burnished gold over his helm, hands loose and sure on a magnificent steed. And then he had taken it off to look up, it seemed, right into her eyes, where she had been watching over the palace wall.

She sees him now, when he looks at her, eyes dark and deep. His smile is slow where it spreads over his face. For the first time, Andromache feels her heart beat in time with something other than the steps of Phaethon’s hooves on the earth; her blood sing with something other than the thrill of physical exertion.

Maybe her mother had been right about something, after all. 


End file.
